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Archives for April 2021

6 Creative Strategies for Getting Traffic from Pinterest

April 26, 2021 by Hubspot Leave a Comment

Written by Caroline Forsey

Pinterest is an undeniably powerful opportunity to reach and convert new audiences.

If you don’t believe me, consider this: The platform has over 250 million users. And roughly 90% of those Pinterest users say they look at content on the network to make purchasing decisions.

However, excelling on Pinterest versus using Pinterest as a strong distribution channel are two different things.

If you’re starting to see an uptick in followers on your Pinterest account, you might want to consider how you can turn those followers into real leads and customers for your business.

Here, let’s explore some creative strategies for turning the followers you get on Pinterest into traffic for your website and social channels.

1. Create boards using relevant keywords.

A board — or an organized compilation of related pins, for easier discoverability — is a necessary component for a good user experience on Pinterest.

For instance, CoSchedule, which has almost 17,000 followers on Pinterest, has organized their pins into boards titled “Content Marketing”, “Social Media Marketing”, “Marketing Inspiration”, and more:

 
Pinterest traffic strategy

New followers can easily find the pins they’re looking for using these broader categories, which is why it makes sense to use popular keywords when creating your boards, as CoSchedule did.

Additionally, these keyword-optimized boards can help make your Pinterest content more discoverable on search engines when someone searches for related keywords — particularly on Google Image searches, since Pinterest is primarily a visual channel:

As shown above, two images from Pinterest arise on Google’s Images search page for the search term, “Best marketing statistics”. By creating boards with searchable keywords, you’re more likely to reach users both on, and off, Pinterest.

2. Leverage Rich pins to ensure your Pinterest content is up-to-date.

Simply put, Rich pins can sync with your website to ensure your content is up-to-date on Pinterest when you make any changes to those pages on your site.  

There are a few reasons you might use Rich pins. If you post your products on Pinterest, Product Rich Pins can ensure availability and pricing are updated automatically as those factors change on your ecommerce site.

If you post recipes, alternatively, then Recipe Rich pins can add extra information to the recipes you pin to your site — including serving size, diet preference, and ratings — for increased discoverability.

Finally, Article Rich Pins will add headlines, titles, description, and author byline information of the article or blog post to your Pinterest site when you pin an article.

These small details go a long way towards ensuring your Pinterest content is always fresh as users find it. Particularly if you’re aiming to drive sales for products from Pinterest, it’s important to use Product Rich Pins so people aren’t frustrated when they find pricing or other information is different between Pinterest and your product pages.

3. Pin consistently, and often.

You can’t expect much traffic from Pinterest if you don’t regularly pin content on the platform. Pinterest, like any social network, requires dedicated, long-term work to see results.

You wouldn’t expect to write one blog post for your website and see a major, steady flow of traffic as a result — and the same goes for Pinterest.

Additionally, as your followers grow, you want to provide high-quality, interesting content to increase brand loyalty and keep those followers active on your page. By regularly pinning, you’re increasing your odds of converting those followers into fans of your brand — which will ultimately drive them off Pinterest, and onto your website or social pages.

4. Optimize your pins — and boards — for search.

At its core, Pinterest is essentially its own visual search engine. And, similar to other search engines, keyword-optimized content performs best on the network.

Additionally, keyword optimizing your Pinterest profile increases your chances to rank organically on other search engines, and drive traffic from search engines like Google to your Pinterest site.

To optimize your Pinterest page, consider inserting brand-related keywords into your bio and profile, pin descriptions, board titles, board descriptions, and even the image alt-text of content you post on Pinterest.

This can help your images appear on Google’s Image search results, as well as improve your chances of ranking on Pinterest for your intended keywords.

5. Create pin-worthy images, and use those images to link out to original content on your website or social pages.

One of the easiest ways to drive traffic back to your website is by creating unique, original content specifically for Pinterest, and then using that pin to link back to your website or blog post.

For instance, consider the infographic below, which I found when searching “best social media platforms” on Pinterest:

Pinterest_Traffic

It’s a good idea to create unique, standalone value with your images for Pinterest. In this case, I can find my answer to “best social media platforms” by looking at the infographic itself without ever leaving Pinterest — which makes for a better user experience.

However, if I’ve found unique value in the content, I might want to click the brand’s website to learn more about their business or see additional content. When I click on the digichef URL, I’m taken to the original page for the infographic, on the business’ website:

You might try a similar approach with your own Pinterest strategy. Consider how you can create unique, standalone content that will perform well on Pinterest. Alternatively, perhaps you can post infographics or other visual assets you’ve already created for your brand on Pinterest, with a link back to your site.

6. Follow similar brands for content inspiration, as well as opportunities to re-pin images that align with your brand.

With Pinterest, each pin you save doesn’t have to be original branded content. Instead, one easy opportunity to increase engagement is to re-pin images that align with your brand to share with your own followers.

Additionally, following other brands can increase traffic to your own Pinterest profile and, ultimately, your website. When you follow someone on Pinterest, Pinterest sends a notification letting them know they have a new follower. Some of those people may then follow you back in return, which is a good way to grow your audience.

Following similar brands can also help you identify popular or trending content on other profiles, as well as gaps in your own Pinterest content strategy.

If you work at a home decor ecommerce store, for instance, you might find that many competitors are posting ‘Easter Home Decor’ images:

Pinterest traffic

This might inspire your team to create your own version of Easter home decor content, as well as other seasonal pins and boards.

Finally, consider partnering with certain brands that have complementary products or services to your own. For example, Benefit Cosmetics partnered with Shutterfly to create the page, “Wedding Looks: benefit cosmetics x Wedding Paper Divas“:

generate Pinterest traffic

The page is filled with pins related to both makeup and stationary for the big day. For expanding your reach and increasing value for your followers, you might try partnering with other popular brands on Pinterest. 

Ultimately, creating a successful Pinterest strategy takes work and dedication, but if you find Pinterest is a popular social platform with your target audience, it’s likely worth the time and effort it takes to grow your following, increase brand awareness, and ultimately drive sales.  

Suggested Reading:

9 Best eCommerce Platforms For Small Business Online Sales

Small Business Trends You Should Follow in 2021

11 Ecommerce Trends to Increase Your Online Sales in 2021

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: B2B, Business Development, Business Financing, Digital Marketing, Slider

9 Business Challenges Every Small Business Struggles With (And How to Fix Them)

April 7, 2021 by Hubspot Leave a Comment

Written by Lindsay Kolowich Cox @lkolow

In the first few years of business, small companies come up against a lot of different challenges. Some are harder than others to overcome — and according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of small businesses fail by the end of their first year. By the end of their fifth year, 50% go under; and by the tenth year, that number rises to 80%.

With survival rates like that, it’s easy to understand why folks face the first few years of business with trepidation. But in fact, many common business problems and challenges are actually fixable. Many times, you’ll find you need to take a step back, take the time to understand the pain points you’re feeling, and re-think your strategy.

Here are several challenges every small business faces, along with some tactical advice about how to fix them.

Common Small Business Problems

  1. Finding Customers
  2. Increasing Brand Awareness
  3. Building an Email List
  4. Lead Generation
  5. Delighting Customers
  6. Hiring Talented People
  7. Managing Workflow
  8. Financial Planning
  9. Scaling

1. Finding Customers

This first one isn’t just a small business problem. The marketers at well-known companies like Apple and Toyota and McDonald’s don’t just sit around waiting for the leads to come in: Even the biggest, most successful companies have people working hard every single day to find new customers.

But for small businesses that aren’t a household name, finding customers can be particularly difficult. For example, there seem to be so many channels you can choose to focus on… How do you know what to prioritize and where to allocate resources?

How to Fix It:

Finding customers starts with figuring how who your ideal customer actually is. Spraying and praying doesn’t work for anybody — you need to make sure you’re spreading the word to the right people.

Craft an idea of what your target customers look like, what they do, where they spend time online by building your buyer personas.

Creating very specific ones can dramatically improve your business results. Once you’ve built your buyer personas, you can start creating content and getting in front of your target customers in the places they spend time online and with the messages that they care about.

2. Increasing Brand Awareness

If your customers don’t know who you are, they can’t buy from you.

It can sometimes seem like today’s biggest brands seemed to have popped up out of nowhere. How did they become a household name? How did they grow that quickly? Can your business grow like that, too?

Of course, most of these companies’ hard work, failures, and rejections happened behind the scenes. But there are strategies for spreading the word about your brand and building a great reputation that you can start right away.

How to Fix It:

There are many ways to spread brand awareness, but the three I’ll touch on here are PR, co-marketing, and blogging.

  • PR: Public relations is less about paying for a spot in a news blog, and more about focusing your voice and finding your place in the market. I recommend reading this great post from FirstRound Capital on what startups and small businesses often get wrong about PR, which also includes some great, tactical tips on how to figure out who’s covering your industry, building relationships, and working with reporters. You can also download our free public relations kit to learn how to maximize your public relations efforts with inbound marketing and social media.
  • Co-marketing: Partnering with another brand will help you inherit some of their image and reputation and create brand evangelists outside your circle. It’s a fantastic way to gain a large volume of new contacts alongside your organic marketing efforts. You can read our ebook on how to get started with co-marketing for more helpful information.
  • Blogging: Running a consistently high-quality blog will also help you build brand awareness. Not only does a blog help drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into leads, but it also helps you establish authority in your industry and trust among your prospects. It’ll also help you build an email list, which brings us to our next point…

3. Building an Email List

In order to move prospects along their buyer’s journey to eventually become your customer, you need to build trust by staying top of mind and providing value consistently. 

That starts with getting prospects into your email list.

As if it isn’t hard enough to build an email list, the average marketing database degrades by about 22.5% every year. 

That means you have to increase your email list by almost a quarter to just maintain it, never mind grow it. It’s the marketing team’s job to find ways to constantly add fresh, new email contacts to your lists.

But what many people call “building an email list” is actually buying an email list — and buying an email list is never a good idea. I repeat: Never a good idea. Not only will your email deliverability and IP reputation be harmed, but it’s also a waste of money. If your current strategy is to buy or rent email lists, then it’s time to regroup and find better places to put those resources.

How to Fix It:

Instead of buying or renting lists, build opt-in email lists. An opt-in email list is made up of subscribers who voluntarily give you their email address so you can send them emails.

The act of opting in necessitates website functionality that captures their email address. This can be achieved with a form builder or other conversion tool (more on that later).

The other piece of the puzzle is creating demand. You can do this by creating great blog content and making it easy for people to subscribe — which, at the same time, will help you increase your online presence, build up search authority, and create evangelists from your content.

You can also revive older lists that you think are mostly decayed by creating an engaging opt-in message and sending it to your old list encouraging contacts who wish to re-opt-in and promising to remove all contacts who don’t respond.

Growing your email list doesn’t necessarily translate into growing your list of sales-qualified leads, which brings me to my next point…

4. Lead Generation

Another problem most small businesses share is lead generation — specifically, generating enough leads to keep the sales team happy.

But generating leads that are both high quantity and high quality is a marketing team’s most important objective. A successful lead generation engine is what turns website visitors into prospective customers and provides a steady stream of sales prospects while you sleep.

How to Fix It:

To make the lead generation process work for your business, you need to first optimize your existing website for conversions. Your website is the most important tool you have for turning prospects into customers. Look through your website and ask yourself:

  • Do each of your webpages clearly guide visitors to take action, or do they leave them wondering what to do next?
  • Do you use a tool that automatically pulls the submissions from your forms and puts them into your contact database, like HubSpot’s free lead generation tool?
  • Are you creating custom landing pages for every single campaign that you run?
  • Do you have lead generation CTAs on each of your blog posts? (Do you have a blog at all?)

Prioritize the most popular pages on your website first. Most businesses have a few, specific pages that bring in the majority of their traffic — often the homepage, “About” page, “Contact Us” page, and maybe one or two of your most popular blog posts. Read this blog post to learn how to figure out which pages to prioritize, and how to optimize them.

Then, implement conversion tools such as: 

  • Pop-ups
  • Hello bars
  • Slide-ins

Finally, be sure to take advantage of free lead management software and apps for startups. Affording marketing in general is a big challenge in and of itself, so finding and implementing the most robust free marketing tools can be a game changer.

5. Delighting Customers

Customer satisfaction is a great goal, but customer delight is even better. After all, delighted customers are the ones who buy from you again, write testimonials and agree to case studies, and refer you to people they know. 

In order to achieve true customer delight so that your customers become promoters of your business, you must surpass expectations and deliver an unmatched experience.

How to Fix It: 

It takes work to continue solving for your customer in a way that turns them into raving fans. Here are some steps get you in the right mindset: 

  • Understand why your customers chose you and what they need
  • Set concrete expectations at the start of the engagement
  • Deliver on those expectations (and satisfy your customers’ needs)
  • Innovate how you can provide unexpected extras that go above and beyond
  • Continue to measure satisfaction and improve the customer experience

6. Hiring Talented People

None of the above can happen at scale without a fantastic team that understands your vision and supports your efforts.

Hiring is often one of the biggest challenges for small businesses, especially since small business executives tend to feel under-resourced to begin with. Hiring new employees is a big deal and a complex process, and the cost of onboarding is an average of over $4,000 per new employee for most companies. And if you don’t hire well, employee turnover can be very, very expensive.

But, as CEO of 2020 On-site Optometry Howard Bernstein said, it’s impossible to know everything yourself. That’s why finding and hiring the right people — and the people who are really excited about what you’re doing — matters.

How to Fix It:

It’s easy to hire with a short-term mindset: send out a job description, screen applicants, and make a decision. But because of the high costs of hiring right, it’s important to invest a significant amount of time in the hiring process. Don’t settle for good employees when you can find great ones, even if it takes longer. It’s the great employees that will help your company get to the next level.

Just like you create buyer personas for your customers, create candidate personas for your job candidates. Your personas should be different for each new role that you’re hiring for, but will share some underlying traits around company culture.

Next, take ownership of attracting candidates to your company’s brand and make them interested in learning more. This will help you build a recruiting pipeline that will give hiring the same predictability as sales. Then, turn those leads into applicants.

7. Managing Workflow

Once you have the people in place to make the magic happen, the next challenge is managing workflow as you scale. You want to ensure that your team has the processes and tools to do good work and do it efficiently. 

At the same time, you can’t be everywhere at once as a business leader. So how do you focus on the business while ensuring that everyone working in the business has what they need?

How to Fix It:

The best ways to diagnose the roadblocks your team faces and increase efficiency is by creating ways for them to provide feedback. This can be done through: 

  • Employee satisfaction surveys
  • Frequent one-on-one meetings with direct reports
  • Ensuring your direct reports implement one-on-one meetings with their direct reports
  • Occasional skip-level meetings
  • Asking about threats to the business and the issues that give them the most “pain” in their roles
  • Finding the commonalities in the feedback you receive and the bottlenecks

8. Financial Planning

In theory, more resources (whether it’s people, tools, or time) increase efficiency and quality. Creating smooth operations starts by providing all the resources you can to your team. 

It sounds simple in theory, but did you notice the caveat, all … you can? Unfortunately, business leaders have budget restrictions based on revenue and margin. 

It, then, becomes a challenge to improve efficiency while working within certain limitations, investing in your business without over-spending outside your means. This is solved by making good decisions based on solid financial planning.

How to Fix It: 

Every business will be different, but you’ll want to use business credit wisely, cut costs where possible, and manage cash flow by staying on top of invoices and bookkeeping. Business accountants and financial advisors can help you analyze your financial situation and help you make good decisions.

9. Scaling

“There’s this mix of building scalability early, versus doing what you have to do to get it all done,” according to Nick Rellas, co-founder and CEO of Drizly.

This is a tricky one, especially since every situation is different. You’ll see this problem arise in all areas of business: in product development, in marketing and content creation, in hiring, and so on.

For example, many business executives will push growth at all costs. But if you grow your company too quickly, you’ll find yourself having to hire quickly. This can overwhelm your experienced team members because it takes a while to train people. And if you don’t train people well, it can end up backfiring.

How to Fix It:

Unfortunately, there’s no perfect answer here. “Depending where you are in your business’ lifecycle,” says Rellas, “the scale will tip one way or the other, but I do think you need both at different times.”

What it comes down to is not obsessing over every detail, but obsessing over the right details. Obsessing over product perfection, for example, might not be as important as obsessing over customer service. It’s better to put your fears aside and launch a product that isn’t perfect because you can always update and improve it. After all, once your products are in the hands of your customers, you can learn much more quickly what’s working and what isn’t.

Obsessing over customer service, however, is worth the extra effort. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos puts it well in his 2016 letter to shareholders: “There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.”

(“Day 1” is what he refers to as a period of growth and innovation, whereas “Day 2” is stasis, irrelevance, and slow demise.)

While these are just a few of the many business challenges facing small businesses every day, there are many others out there. Many of them can be planned for and mitigated with the proper planning and strategy.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Suggested Reading:

The 12 Most Profitable Small Businesses [2021]

9 Best eCommerce Platforms For Small Business Online Sales

Small Business Trends You Should Follow in 2021

 

Filed Under: B2B, Business Development, Digital Marketing, Slider

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